Venice and Its Visitors:

Abstract

The paper focuses on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the shifting from a predominance of overnight tourists to a predominance of excursions in Venice. The analytical and logical framework was set up in order to develop a useful instrument to delineate marketing policies and to indicate possible instruments aimed at controlling excessive visitor flows in the historic centre. Thus, because of the need to know the new trends in tourism in Venice and the characteristics of visitors, a new survey was carried out from August 1989 to July 1990 in St. MarkÆs Square. The LOGIT model has been applied to the results of the survey in order to investigate the main characteristics of the visitors with respect to their origin and socioeconomic profile, their preferences and their holiday decisions. The ôgrossing upö methodology of the results of the survey enables us to estimate the total amount and the structure of visitors per year, and thus to estimate the daily level of nights/days in the historic centre.